GARDHOUSE, William James

William James Gardhouse farmed one hundred and fifty acres at what is now the intersection of Islington Avenue and Rexdale Boulevard, ran Etobicoke Township’s council table for most of two decades, and broke a thirty-year Conservative hold on the West York riding by winning it for the Liberals in 1934.

Early life

Gardhouse was born on 1 September 1880 at Highfield, a farm crossroads since absorbed into Etobicoke. He trained at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. Around 1903 he set up a stock farm of a hundred and fifty acres at what is now the intersection of Islington Avenue and Rexdale Boulevard. He ran the operation for over four decades before handing it down to his son Arnold in the mid-1940s. Arnold sold the land in 1952, and it was redeveloped as north-Etobicoke suburbia.

Orange Order

His lodge affiliation was with Parkhill, a rural lodge that drew its members from the farming townships west of Toronto. Ontario Orangeism had held that rural Protestant constituency since the mid-19th century. The lodge was not a formal political organization, but its web of farming families and country meetings sat underneath the riding-level network Gardhouse would later draw on when he ran for Queen’s Park.

Local government

His township career opened with a seat on Etobicoke council in 1916. He held it again the following year, moved up to Deputy Reeve for the 1918-through-1920 sessions, and then sat as Reeve from 1921 to 1924. A concurrent seat on York County Council ran seven years and culminated in his election as County Warden in 1924 — the senior office in Ontario’s two-tier county system.

After a three-year gap, he returned as Deputy Reeve in 1927 and served in that office for four consecutive years. In 1932 and 1933 he again sat as Reeve of Etobicoke. The total — twelve-plus years of senior township office and a county wardenship — made him the most experienced municipal politician in the riding by the time he stood for the Legislature.

Provincial politics

Gardhouse contested West York in the 1934 general election as a Liberal. No Liberal had carried the riding in over thirty years. Mitchell Hepburn’s provincial sweep that June allowed him to take it. He served in the Legislative Assembly through two terms, until 30 June 1943.

Later life and death

Gardhouse joined the Toronto and York Roads Commission in 1942 and served eight years. He suffered a heart attack in 1947 and never fully recovered. He died on 6 October 1950 at the age of seventy.